Value Scale

Gary showed me this simple method for judging values in my painting. He uses an eleven step value scale, much like Ansel Adams’ Zone System. Gary’s scale has six primary values, numbered 1 through 6, and five half-steps that lie in between. His insight, which seems obvious in retrospect, is that you can use standard palette colors, straight from the tube as examples of values on the scale. The picture below shows five of the standard palette colors with their positions on the value scale.

In a typical painting,

  • White will be reserved for specular highlights.
  • Prussion Blue will be reserved for the darkest darks.
  • The shadow values will start at Burnt Sienna.

This means the bulk of the mid tones will have values in the narrow range between Yellow Ochre and Burnt Sienna.  Mid tones are important – they make or break a painting – but they are hard to nail because they occupy such a narrow portion of the value scale.

Gary recommends figuring out the mid tones by process of elimination. Start with the knowns, like the blackest blacks in the shadows and the whites of the specular highlights. Then work your way up out of the darkest shadows towards the mid tones. Once your figured out the shadows and the highlights, all that is left is the mid tones, and by this point, you have a lot of paint on the canvas to help you make judgment calls.

Gary also stressed the importance of using the entire value scale in order to make the painting more interesting. It doesn’t matter whether the scene is light or dark – you use the entire range. If it is a night scene, streetlights and stars will be pure white, and the moonlit mid tones will be blues with values between Yellow Ochre and Burnt Sienna. If it is a sunny day in White Sands, New Mexico, the glint of the sun will be white, and the sunny sand will be made up of mid tone grays with values between Yellow Ochre and Burnt Sienna. In both cases, the shadows will start at Burnt Sienna and go all the way to Prussian Blue.

Making Progress Again

I just returned from a trip abroad, so this is my first post in a couple of weeks. Gary is at the Hermitage in St Petersburg, so Jim Phalen is our guest instructor for the week. Jim is a master of paint surface techniques and very knowledgeable about art theory and history. The photos below show my progress for the week.

In my first session back, I worked on the reds, painting the apples and the cloth.

I took Jim Phalen’s advice and extended the Burnt Sienna underpainting across the white tabletop. Then I notched out part of the cloth on the right side in the back to make the composition more interesting.

Painted the pear and the tip of its stem.

Painted the tabletop, the inside of the decanter, and the cork.

Darkened the front edge of the table.

Marching Orders

Had my second weekly critique today. Gary used the time to demonstrate how to choose the right values for each part of the painting. He says the hardest values to nail are the mid-tones, but it is these values that make or break a painting. The reason mid-tones are hard is that the artist actually has a choice. The lightest lights and darkest darks are easy to place because there is no choice – the limited range of values available in paint forces the darkest shadows to black while reserving white for specular highlights.

I like to think of the process as putting together a jigsaw puzzle. With a puzzle, you start with the corners then move to the edges and then the center, always moving from the known towards the unknown, always triangulating from multiple directions. In a painting, you start with the obvious known values which are the darkest shadows and brightest highlights. Once these are placed, you can work up out of the shadows and down from the highlights until the mid-tones are boxed in. At this point, the choice of suitable values is smaller and more manageable.

Gary has painted a number of suggestions directly on my painting: (1) the horizontal gradient in the background should start at a much lighter value on the left and go to jet black on the right; (2) the right side of the table near the red cloth will need to go very dark; (3) the wine and the shadows on the fruit and the right side of the bowl need to go almost to black; (4) the front edge of the table needs to be pretty dark.

If you look at the image above, you can see some of Gary’s suggestions, painted directly on my canvas. I find it fascinating that the background should go from a fairly light, chalky gray on the left to jet black on the right. It is also amazing that the portion of the table top adjacent to the red cloth will be a fairly dark, olive drab. If Gary has these colors spot on – and I suspect he does – they will illustrate how hard it is to nail the mid-tones without the context of the adjacent lights and darks.

Here’s the gradient, roughed in to Gary’s specifications. It actually looks pretty good and nothing like what I would have imagined from looking at the first picture.

At this point, I have put in a more dramatic gradient behind the tableau.

Wine and Apples – More Darks

Today I mixed up some deep burgundies for the decanter and the wine glasses. I started with Permanent Alizarin Crimson, then mixed in some French Ultramarine to move more towards violet, then darkened the mixture with Burnt Umber.

I’ve been working to establish my darkest darks so that I will have some reference for my shadows and mid-tones. Soon I will need to nail down the other end of the scale by finding the light mid-tone value for the tabletop. You see, I need to reserve white for the specular highlights – when the painting is done, nothing will be white, except for the small reflections on the glass and the fruit. This means that the table top will need to take on a value more like the cloth but then the cloth will have to go darker, which will push the shadow on the cloth almost to black. When I lose white, the entire value range will compress.

Wine and Apples Background

This evening I mixed up a string of dark, slightly warm neutrals for the background. I started with a mixture of Burnt Umber and Prussian Blue, which I lightened with Titanium White. As I got to the lightest darks on the left side, I found I needed to add a bit of Yellow Ochre and Burnt Sienna to keep the mixture warm enough. I like the dramatic chiaroscuro look of the painting, but think the darkest portion of the background on the right side needs to go darker.

This was my first time painting with Neo Megilp. This strange sounding medium is added to the paint to make it settle and flow. Notice how the dark paint with Neo Megilp is velvety smooth, while the Burnt Sienna in the underpainting shows lots of brushwork.

Tomorrow, I hope start on the darks of the wine in the decanter and the glasses, probably with a mixture of Permanent Alizarin Crimson and Burnt Umber.

Wine and Apples Full Scale Drawing

Made a bit of progress on my still life over the weekend. After finishing the color study, I did an 18″x24″ sketch in graphite to figure out the composition and the aspect ratios of the various ellipses. I tried a number of scales and small adjustments in item placement before settling on this design.

18″x24″ graphite drawing on paper.

I redrew my design on my canvas using an Indian Red ink pen for the horizontals in the tabletop and the strong diagonal. My plan is to do an under painting in burnt sienna, so I’m hoping the inked lines will mostly disappear into the paint. The remaining items were sketched in vine charcoal. I didn’t use a fixative and am expecting the charcoal to fall away as I find the exact edges in paint.

18″x24″ canvas with Indian Red Faber-Castell Pitt pen and vine charcoal.

Originally my plan was to do all the drawing with a paintbrush directly on the canvas, but I had so much fun with graphite compositional study that I just continued on the canvas. I still expect that I will make significant adjustments with the brush in the under painting.

Tomorrow I will start an underpainting in burnt sienna.

Towering Easel

I really like my new easel, but I’m glad I’m 6’6″ tall as it must have been designed for basketball players. It is good that the the bottom tray goes really high because the top canvas holder does not go low. When I work with an small study, it is high in the air – about eye level for me while standing. I may have to make a magnetic backing board to position my smaller studies at a more reasonable altitude.

This is about the lowest possible position for my 6″ x 9″ study.

Small Study – Big Brush

During class I worked on finishing up the table top and the cork in the wine bottle. I am now getting used to using the large brush and working faster. For those that are interested, the brush is a very affordable #6 filbert Blick Masterstroke Pure Interlocking Bristle. Gary recommends these brushes.

It is amazing what you can do with a large brush.

Wine and Apples Color Study Update

In my last session, I assembled a new easel, balanced my lamps, and started mixing colors. My old easel was broken so Gage gave me a new Blick Studio Medium-Duty H-Frame Easel. This is a really nice easel for $89 and it even comes with the screwdrivers needed for the assembly. All of the components were well packed and well marked and the instructions were reasonably clear. One nice thing about this easel is that the carriage tray can be positioned anywhere from a few inches off the ground to five feet up. The high position is useful when working on really small pieces, like this 6″ x 8″ study, which I wanted at eye level.

Gary dropped by the studio after his perspective lecture and caught me with a tiny synthetic brush and told me to go back to the #6 bristle. He was right and I almost want to do another quick study with just the #6.

This string of reds for the apple included a tint of Daniel Smith Permanent Red, various combinations Permanent Red and Alizarin Crimson, and finally combinations of Alizarin Crimson with Burnt Umber. I liked everything but the tint (not shown), which looked like strawberry toothpaste.

At this stage, I’ve painted the two darkest reds and the two darkest neutrals.

All that remains for this study is the table top. After that, I’d like to revisit the colors in the apples and the pear and the metal bowl, either in this study or a new one.